News & Commentary

The Division of Motor Vehicles has taken a first step to address an ACLU lawsuit filed last month challenging the legality of DMV actions in sending out deficient and confusing notices of alleged decades-old traffic violations to over 1,500 residents. In response to that suit, the DMV has mailed those individuals a new notice advising them of their right to a meaningful hearing to contest the violations, and creating a mechanism to lift in the interim any license suspension that may have been imposed.

The Woonsocket Education Department has agreed to stop sending children to Rhode Island’s unlawfully operated truancy court system and to end its participation in the program completely. The agreement follows a pending class-action lawsuit filed in March by the American Civil Liberties Union and the ACLU of Rhode Island charging that the state’s truancy court system is devoid of due process protections for children in violation of state and federal law.

The RI ACLU today announced the favorable settlement of a federal lawsuit it filed last year against the Town of Johnston and police chief Richard Tamburini for illegally releasing the private drivers’ license information of a firefighter to a Town Councilman as part of a public dispute between the Council and the Fire Department. The lawsuit, filed by RI ACLU volunteer attorney James Kelleher, was on behalf of the firefighter, Edward Simone.

The Rhode Island ACLU has today filed suit in federal court to contest the Division of Motor Vehicles’ actions in advising thousands of motorists that their license and registration will be suspended due to alleged unpaid fines that may go back decades. The lawsuit the notices sent out by the DMV “facially unconstitutional,” pointing out that they give the recipients no information about the nature of the alleged offense leading to the suspension, about the penalty for the offense, or even the date that the offense purportedly took place.

Although the numbers have improved significantly since the Rhode Island ACLU sued the Department of Human Services last July for failing to process food stamp applications in a timely manner, almost 3 out of 10 applicants eligible for expedited food stamps are still not being processed within seven days as required by federal law. Those are the results gleaned from reports prepared by DHS and provided to the ACLU as part of the settlement agreement entered in the lawsuit last October.

The Rhode Island ACLU today objected to a request by the Wyatt Detention Center to prevent the public disclosure of videotapes of the treatment by guards of Hiu Lui “Jason” Ng, the 34-year-old Chinese detainee who died in August 2008 while in the facility’s custody. The objection was filed in the ACLU’s on-going lawsuit on behalf of Ng’s family, which challenges the lack of medical care he received while suffering from terminal cancer and a broken spine.

The American Civil Liberties Union and the ACLU of Rhode Island today filed a class-action lawsuit charging that the state’s truancy court system is devoid of due process protections in violation of state and federal law.

The RI ACLU has sharply blasted a plan announced today by Providence Mayor David Cicilline to “institute random drug testing in the Police Department effective immediately.” The ACLU said the proposal was “clearly illegal” and called it “sadly ironic” for the Department, “in the name of rooting out illegal activity by officers,” to propose a policy that, if implemented, would itself be a crime.

Seeking to halt a disturbing trend by public bodies to unlawfully meet in private, the RI ACLU has, for the second time in six months, filed an Open Meetings Act (OMA) lawsuit against a school committee for violating the law’s provisions governing the holding of executive sessions.